


An Assembly Such As This

by timetravelbypen



Series: A trip in the box through history [2]
Category: Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/F, Historical, No Spoilers, Regency, Soft!!!, Yaz: Disaster Gay, oh no she's hot, thasmin, the Doctor changes outfits to be historically accurate, the Doctor: tired and sad and licks rocks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-03
Updated: 2020-04-03
Packaged: 2021-03-01 00:40:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,681
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23456413
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/timetravelbypen/pseuds/timetravelbypen
Summary: Yaz and the Doctor go to a dance at Almack's Assembly Rooms in 1813, and Yaz convinces the Doctor to go all in on the historical costuming for a change.
Relationships: Thirteenth Doctor/Yasmin Khan
Series: A trip in the box through history [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1707598
Comments: 24
Kudos: 79





	An Assembly Such As This

“So,” the Doctor said, hand hovering over the console, “where to next?”

Yaz looked at the expectant blonde woman’s face for a moment, warm in the light of the TARDIS control room, and opened her mouth to answer before shutting it again.

“What is it?” the Doctor asked.

“It’s silly,” Yaz replied, offering up an awkward smile.

“’Course it’s not,” the Doctor insisted, throwing her arms wide. “Anywhere in space and time. What d’you reckon?”

“I… well, all right, it’s a bit weird-”

“Weird’s good, I love a bit of weird.”

The Doctor’s grin was infectious, and Yaz couldn’t help but smile back.

“So, all right, back in school we did this whole year on nineteenth century lit, right?” she said. “Starting with Jane Austen and right on through, and I had to do this presentation on her and dress up and the whole thing and… I really thought it were fun, actually?” She shoved her hands in her jacket pocket to keep from fidgeting. “And I always thought, you know, if I had a time machine, where would I visit?”

“And now you have a time machine,” the Doctor said.

“Exactly. And just a visit, mind, like an evening. Can we go to a dance?”

The Doctor’s hazel eyes lit up.

“Oh, brilliant,” she said. “Yasmin Khan, one nineteenth-century ball coming up!”

She pulled the lever down, setting the TARDIS console to life, darting to and fro around it as it whirred and spun, adjusting here, tweaking there. The workings of the ship made absolutely no sense at all to Yaz, but watching the Doctor flit about, snagging up custard creams and talking to her ship as they went was somehow, strangely, soothing. It was all a bit madcap, a bit topsy-turvy, but always interesting.

Just how she liked it, really.

When they landed, the Doctor stuck her head out the door of the police box, peering around like an owl popping out of a burrow. Yaz crept up behind her just in time to see her scoop up a loose cobblestone from the ground and stick it straight into her mouth.

“Mphfh,” she said around the stone, while Yaz did her level best not to think about what else that particular piece of ground had touched that week.

“Can’t hear you, Doctor,” she reminded her gently.

“Mmfppph,” the Doctor said, then spat the rock back out onto the ground and closed the TARDIS door. “London, 1813, or thereabouts. And,” she added, a very smug smile spreading across her face, “we landed just across the way from Almack’s Assembly Rooms. That’ll do all right?”

Yaz grinned, already heading off for the TARDIS’ vast wardrobe.

“That’ll be fine.”

Half an hour later, she returned to the console room, relishing in the luxurious swish of her pale blue empire-waisted dress.

“It’s so cool that you just _have_ all these things,” she said. “You would make a historian’s _year_ if you just… Doctor?”

She stopped as she realized the other woman was staring at her. A hand flew up to her hair – was it sticking up? Had she done it wrong? But then the Doctor smiled, soft and warm and real.

“You look lovely, Yaz,” she said, and Yaz felt her cheeks heating up.

_She’s just being nice, calm down_ , she told herself firmly.

“Ready to go?” the Doctor asked, sauntering over towards the door.

“You’re not getting dressed up then?” Yaz asked.

The Doctor glanced down at herself, in her usual rainbow-striped shirt and purple coat.

“Something wrong with this?” she asked, frowning, glancing between herself and Yaz like she was genuinely worried.

“Oh… no, of course not, that’s not what I meant!” Yaz said hurriedly. “It’s just… isn’t dressing up part of the fun? Or, I mean, maybe not so fun for a time traveller, maybe you’re used to all this, but for _me_ wearing a dress way older than I am… it’s… I mean, it’s neat!”

_You’re rambling, stop talking now._

The Doctor raised an eyebrow at that, giving Yaz’ outfit, and Yaz herself, another long look – she was sure, absolutely sure, that the Doctor could tell she was blushing, there was no way she didn’t know – and then she nodded.

“Right,” she said, “I’ll go… find something. It’ll be neat, like you said. Oh!” She dug around in one of her coat’s many pockets, which Yaz was beginning to suspect were, like the TARDIS, bigger on the inside, and produced a leather wallet with a piece of paper inside. “Psychic paper. There’s invitations to these things, right? That’ll let you in. I’ll be along.”

“But what about you?”

“I’ll come find you!” the Doctor insisted, shooing Yaz gently towards the door. “Now go on, start your evening holiday!”

And then Yaz was hurried outside and faced with the blue TARDIS doors. For half a moment, she thought about going back inside and helping – the hours she and Ryan had spent outside that second hand shop’s dressing room flashed uncomfortably into her head – and she reached out a hand to push open the doors again, but it wouldn’t budge.

“Oi!” she said, knocking gently at the door, but it seemed the TARDIS had decided: Yaz had suggested a wardrobe change, and Yaz was to leave the Doctor to it, and that’s all there was to that.

“Fine,” she sighed at the blue box, “but if she comes out with, I dunno, a tie round her head or something, fix it for her, will you?”

She wasn’t sure, but she thought she heard the ship burble its agreement.

And so Yaz, policewoman from Sheffield in the twenty-first century, turned round to walk into London in the early nineteenth. No matter how many planets or how many times they visited, she’d never quite get over this, the sheer impossible magic of traveling the way she did. She almost wished she could break the Doctor’s rules about visiting past selves just so she could get her fourteen-year-old self some even better research notes, but it was enough to just soak in the sights and sounds, so much better than any period film. The evening sky was hazy with smoke (the one thing period films had over the real thing – the smell was, almost universally, better) and across the way from where the TARDIS was tucked unobtrusively between two buildings, people were sweeping into the doors of a tall, grey stone building, candlelight blazing away from inside mullioned windows. Yaz picked her way across the street, pulling up as much of a catalogue of historical facts as she could, presented the psychic paper at the door, and was instantly announced as “the Honorable Miss Yasmin Khan” and swept inside.

It was early, but the rooms were already warm with people absolutely everywhere. A country dance was underway, and Yaz slipped down the stairs to watch the patterns unfold and hope she could replicate them – the one flaw in her brilliant plan to come here for an evening was lack of practice. She looked back over her shoulder to scan the crowd for the Doctor, hoping perhaps she’d know what to do, when a young gentleman appeared in front of her with a low bow and invited her to dance the next with him.

Blissfully, it was one of the slower ones, although it still involved a startling amount of hopping, and Yaz was just starting to get the hang of it when, on one of the promenades, she turned and saw the Doctor striding into the assembly rooms and she danced straight into the shoulder of the woman in front of her. There was a lot of hushed apologizing and some scrambling to catch up to her place in the dance, but that did not account for the phenomenal rush of heat across her whole face.

That was due entirely to the fact that the Doctor, who was now sniffing suspiciously around the table of lemonades, had dressed to the nines. She was wearing a perfectly fitted, midnight blue frock coat over a waistcoat of lighter blue, embroidered in starbursts of rainbow-colored flowers. She was even wearing the white flouncy cravat and tight white breeches of the time, and _bloody hell the Doctor had really nice legs_.

Yaz had not felt quite this befuddled around a girl since she’d first realized she liked girls in primary school, but then, most girls were not several-thousand-year-old aliens with their own time machine and a smile that could light up the world.

When the dance ended and Yaz was at last led off the floor by her dance partner, she scrambled over to the Doctor just in time to stop her taking a bite of a piece of waxed fruit.

“Hi,” she said, “you made it.”

“Soniced my way in,” the Doctor said proudly. “So, what do you think?”

She struck a pose, hands proudly on hips, an excited smile scronching up her nose.

“You were right, this is neat,” she went on, fidgeting with her collar. “Nice change of pace, this. Although it’s not got as many pockets as my usual trousers, I’ll have to fix that.”

“Doctor,” Yaz said, taking the other woman’s hand before she could stop herself, “you look amazing.”

The Doctor met her eyes then, suddenly serious, and for a moment, she looked so very sad, like she could tell exactly where the path they were on was going to lead them. And she probably could – Yaz couldn’t fathom being someone who lived so long, who saw so much pass by, and yet who still bothered to find joy in small things. It must have taken an incredible amount of effort.

“D’you want to dance?” she asked.

“A dance with Yaz?” the Doctor asked, the solemn sadness melting away from her eyes. “’Course I do!”

And for the next few hours they did. The Doctor turned out to be an excellent dancer, particularly at the more energetic dances, and Yaz laughed through breathlessness, eager to keep up. It was a riot of spinning and catching hands and tapping feet, and every second of it was fun.

But of course the clock had to strike midnight and the carriage turn back into a pumpkin at some point. After a while – after dancing “too many” together – they started to get a few odd looks. Some of the gentlemen were whispering about the Doctor, and some of the ladies looked askance at Yaz.

“And this,” sighed Yaz, “is why I only ever wanted to _visit_. Too many rules, honestly.”

“Seriously,” the Doctor replied, “besides, they shouldn’t worry about us, that short man in the corner is a Sontaran with a particularly good neural image inducer.”

Yaz looked round to see a portly but very human-looking mustachioed gentleman in the corner with a few other men holding glasses of port.

“You sure?” she asked. The Doctor nodded. “Do we need to do anything about it?”

“Nah,” she said, taking Yaz’ hand in hers and stepping onto the very edge of the dance floor, spinning her easily towards her. “Well maybe… nah, he’ll be all right.”

The Doctor caught her up in a different kind of dance, her hand soft on Yaz’ waist as the string quartet’s music lilted around them in a waltz. Yaz let her hand rest on the Doctor’s shoulder as she spun them around, far closer together than any of the dances they’d done thus far had allowed for.

“Are you _sure_ we don’t need to do anything about him?” she asked again.

“Not really,” the Doctor confessed, scrunching her face up apologetically. “But he’s not bothering anyone, is he? I’ll keep tabs on this week once we leave, we can nip back if we have to.”

“If you say so,” Yaz replied, letting herself be caught up in the music, in the Doctor’s arms, in quiet for just a few minutes. It was, she had to admit, nice to have this without worrying too much about getting blown up or shot at.

Although…

“Doctor,” she whispered, leaning in even closer, “they definitely have not stopped staring.”

In fact the murmurs around them had only grown louder; one lady they passed muttered a clearly audible and exasperated _honestly_ , while for some reason one of the gentlemen was commenting snidely about “demmed Continentals.”

“Oh, hang on,” the Doctor said, running her tongue over her teeth like she had something stuck in them. “I did say 1813, didn’t I?”

Yaz nodded, and the Doctor leaned in farther to whisper something into her ear.

“Yasmin Khan,” she said, her voice close and soft in a way that made shivers run down her spine, “I think we may have accidentally debuted the waltz in London about a week early.”

Yaz was still laughing when they made it back to the TARDIS.

“Thanks, Doctor,” she said, leaning happily against the console. “That was fun.”

“Anytime, Yaz,” she said with a grin, shrugging out of her frock coat and tossing it onto a railing. “Was it what you wanted out of a visit?”

“It was brilliant,” she said. “And not long enough to spoil the shine with all the bad parts of history.” She offered the Doctor a small smile. “You have very clearly been to a dance like that before.”

“Once or twice,” the Doctor confessed.

“Well, it was nice of you to bring me. Hope you weren’t bored or anything.”

She’d meant it as a joke, some lighthearted teasing to cover her embarrassment, but the Doctor looked genuinely affronted at the idea.

“No, of course I wasn’t,” she said. “I’d never been there with you before, had I?”

“Is that why you like traveling with people?” Yaz asked. “Showing us stuff?”

The Doctor started to offer a breezy answer – Yaz could see it in her face – but she stopped, running a hand through her hair.

“I am very old, Yasmin Khan,” she said. “I’ve seen a lot of things. Good things. Bad things. Lots of bad things. And sometimes… it’s nice to have a reminder. It’s nice to see someone experience something for the first time. Reminds me to be excited about it too.”

It _was_ work for her to find the joy in things. Somehow, Yaz was a bit sad to have been right about that.

“Well, that were brilliant,” she said. “Very exciting. Although, honestly, the frocks are nice but the shoes leave something to be desired, my feet are killing me.”

“I got this thing on,” the Doctor said, tugging hopelessly at the knot on her cravat, “but I don’t think I will ever be able to get it off.”

“Here,” Yaz replied with a laugh, “let me. It’s easier if you can see what you’re doing.”

She stepped up, working gently at the knotted silk at the Doctor’s throat until she’d tugged it free, and then she had to go and realize just how close she was. She looked up the few inches to meet the Doctor’s hazel eyes, dark in the warm, low light of the console room. And instead of stepping back, stepping away, continuing the dance they’d been doing for weeks, she stepped forward, reaching up to fix the Doctor’s collar where it stuck up.

“I, um,” she said, not sure how to begin, not sure how to retreat, “Doctor, I-”

But then the Doctor leaned forward just enough to meet her halfway, just enough to let Yaz give in and press their lips together. She sighed as she let herself melt against her, this impossible woman who could fly a time machine but not untie knots, who smelled of peppermint and engine oil and custard creams, who could see every incredible thing the universe had to offer and still wanted to spend time with her.

The Doctor smiled against her lips, and she reached out around her to set the TARDIS in motion again. The box flew through the sky, off to who only knew where, but safe inside, to the whispers of a London string quartet, the two women waltzed, hands entwined, with only the stars to stare. 

**Author's Note:**

> The End Times have me writing and posting fanfic for the first time since high school, oh yikes here we go.
> 
> Did I look up historical facts for this? Yes. Did I proofread this? Not really, no.
> 
> Not set at any particular point in continuity, I just wanted them to dance and for the Doctor to get to wear a fun costume for a change.
> 
> The waltz really did debut in British society in 1813 after it was deemed "acceptable" by one of the patronesses of Almack's, Dorothea Lieven, who was the Russian ambassador's wife. It became fashionable a few decades earlier in Vienna, hence the comment about "continentals." 
> 
> And yes, the man who asks Yaz to dance was being very rude by not being properly introduced first, but I didn't want to devote time to that, I wanted to devote time to Yaz and the Doctor being Soft. 
> 
> So... hope you enjoy! Comments and kudos appreciated. :)


End file.
